Industrial plants typically include distributed control systems (DCSs), programmable logic controllers (PLCs), safety systems, and other devices from various vendors. Each of these systems or devices can include or be associated with configuration data. The configuration data can be stored in a variety of file formats, such as simple text or structured binary or binary proprietary. The structure of configuration data can vary depending on the release of software running on the systems or devices.
In control systems, configuration data may generally not be available in an information system or database. Compact collection of such data may be important for high performance of a data collection system in order to document the configuration data accurately. In its absence, a system may be inaccurate or low-performing, or the system may have restrictions in supporting various software releases for some systems or devices. A typical data collection operation using checkpoint files versus a derived text file, like an Exception Build (EB) file used in a legacy system from HONEYWELL, can reduce the duration of operations from several days to less than a few hours, thereby reducing the impact on the performance of a legacy control system.
The need for visibility into configuration data can also arise when there is a proposal to move from one controller to another controller with a short time period allowed for re-engineering. Allowing the import of known configuration data onto the new controller could reduce or eliminate the need for reconfiguration of the strategies employed by the previous controller. This can help to expedite the engineering work, many times reducing the engineering work to qualification only if variances in control functions across the controllers are small.